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Creator: Michael Whitehouse ☀''this was taken from creepypasta wiki credit goes to the original author'' . PART1 After uploading a number of horror stories to various places around the internet, I was overwhelmed by the sheer volume of supportive emails and messages I received. It spurred me on to write more, to take my ambitions seriously, and to commit an increasing amount of my time to the pursuit of becoming a published author. Little did I know that this new found acknowledgement of my writing would lead to a series of horrific and abhorrent events. For over a year I received numerous messages and emails, most very positive and enjoyable, yet every few days I would also find a strange, disconnected and fragmented piece of correspondence sitting in my inbox. Each email would consist of one random word as a subject heading, with the message itself comprised of a simple phrase, normally only two words long. The email address would change each time, but it was clear from the nature of the content that the author was the same. At first I dismissed them as the idle product of a bored lurker on the internet, attempting to amuse themselves with the thought of myself reading garbled, puzzling, yet worryingly cryptic messages. As the days wore on, however, and the emails became gradually more twisted and prophetic, I began to suspect that they were of a far more sinister origin. I had posted and contributed to many websites and forums over the years, and it was not unusual to wake up each morning to twenty or thirty new emails in my inbox. I often spent my lunch break answering them, and I genuinely enjoyed the correspondence. However, the day after posting a story called 'The Passenger', I followed my usual routine of logging into my email account at noon, only to find one message which stood out most uncomfortably from the others. The subject heading was 'Suffer' and the email itself contained just two words: 'Baby Cries'. I sent the message to my trash folder and thought nothing more of it, until later that night. It had been a long day and as I had been writing from dawn to dusk, I was tiring rapidly, feeling suitably ready for a good, long overdue sleep. It was around 11:30PM and, just as I started to drift into a dream, I heard a noise. It was not out of place, nor did it cause any real concern to me. coming as it did from my neighbour's house through the wall. It was the type of common sound any resident is familiar with. I smirked to myself thinking 'baby cries', and drifted back to sleep sure that the child's mother or father would soon be there to comfort it, as they always were. I woke again, glancing at my mobile phone which cast an unearthly green glow around the room. Seeing that it was after three in the morning, I became agitated knowing that I had a long day ahead of me; rest does not come easily on those nights when we know we must rise early. The mere thought of the necessity of a good night's sleep before the next day's work, precludes any notion of sleep itself. Lying there I listened in the darkness to the infant next door, breaking its heart, inconsolable and distraught. Surely the parents had not let it scream for all those hours, lying there alone in the blackness of night, unattended? After trying to block out the child's cries for what seemed like hours, I admitted defeat and moved to the spare room that my family and friends normally stayed in, on the rare occasions when they visited. At 7:30AM my phone alarm sounded and, after fighting the reality of another day, I reluctantly left my bed, walking slowly to the kitchen to make some coffee. From the window I looked out onto the street below. What I saw horrified me: a police car and two ambulances parked outside of my neighbour's home. Even through my groggy, pre-caffeinated mind, the memory of that helpless child crying in the night sprung to the fore. Immediately I stopped what I was doing, threw on some clothes, and ran outside. I was not the only person watching, as the usual nosey residents stood at their doors, with some even out on the street, still wearing their dressing gowns idly gossiping, whipping up any number of scandalous rumours. Asking several onlookers what had happened, I was told a variety of accounts, from a child being abducted to someone having a seizure during the night. A hush fell over the street as my neighbours' front door finally opened, slowly. Three police officers exited the house sombrely, as a collective gasp seeped out from the mouths of the crowd of onlookers. Quickly behind, two men in sterile white clothing carried a stretcher, and on it a body bag containing the now deceased remains of one of my former neighbours. A few cries rang out from across the street, those who knew them wept, while those who did not, gossiped. Then, another silence, followed by another stretcher, and another body bag. This time no one uttered a sound. The street was void of noise. A tangible tension spread through the air, a hanging sense of dread as all of us waited, hoping beyond hope for no more death. Heartbreak. The last stretcher, supporting a small and insignificant shroud, was carried out solemnly into the morning air, and placed carefully into the back of an ambulance. Tears were wept, and answers were demanded from the police, but I could not cope with the sight. I could not bear it. The sound of that poor infant screaming through the night, screaming for its very life rang out in my ears. The sound of a child now forever silenced. The memory was deafening. How was I supposed to know? The child had cried before, as many do. I did not know! I walked, dazed, back through my garden and into the now hollow sanctuary of my house. I'm not ashamed to say that I cried, cried knowing that maybe if I had just paid attention or shown more concern than simply getting to sleep, that if I had noticed something was amiss, I could have called the police and then perhaps they would still be alive! Several hours later, two police officers arrived at my door to ask if I had seen or heard anything unusual from the night before. They said that they were not at liberty to tell me what had happened, but that any information I could give them would help immensely with their investigation. When I told them about the email I had received they looked at each other with an obvious sense of skepticism. When I showed it to them, they asked if they could have my login details in an attempt to trace where the email came from. Of course I gave it to them and then they left after saying that they would be in touch. As soon as they were gone I returned to the computer screen to switch it off. I recoiled in horror at the sight of another cryptic email sitting in my inbox. The subject heading said 'Fan', and the email again contained only two short words. Two words which drove fear through every part of my being. It simply read: "You Told." I was utterly unprepared for the events which followed. PART 2 The next six weeks were filled with self recrimination and sleepless nights. I was continually haunted by the sound of that poor child crying in the night, and of what I could have done to protect her. Shamefully on my part, my guilt was eclipsed by the fear of what those two dreadful words seemed to promise: “You Told”. My days were increasingly engulfed by thoughts of someone watching me - eyes staring out from around corners, whispers in the dark. The paranoia was only fuelled further by the apparent lack of details; the police had released little information about the dead family, and had yet to even declare their deaths the result of murder, which I was certain they were. A police officer by the name of McClellan had paid me a visit on two separate occasions to ask further questions. I informed her about the subsequent message which I had received after the family were killed (a point which she would not verify for me, no matter how hard I pried), and while she jotted down fragments of our conversations into her little black notepad, it was clear that she was only talking to me out of a commitment to procedure, rather than one stemming from a belief that the emails were of any real importance. In attempting to ascertain exactly what had happened to the family next door, I was met with a friendly, and I have to say, attractive smile, followed by a polite explanation that any information regarding the fate of my neighbours could not be divulged to the public. As time wore on, my nerves began to settle, and while I was still deeply disturbed by the entire ordeal, I was at least able to return to some form of normality; that is, with the exception of my writing. I hadn’t been able to place one measly word onto paper, nor transfer one simple keystroke to my monitor screen. No matter how hard I tried, no matter how determined, I just could not write. Fiction seemed inconsequential and pale when reflected against the death of a child. As I had received no further emails, I managed to even persuade myself that they were unrelated to those terrible events; one of life’s strange and unsettling coincidences, and nothing more. With hindsight this delusion seems to have been utterly foolish. While I had been unable to write, I had still busied myself with the arduous and tedious task of submitting manuscript after manuscript of my previously completed work to various publishers. These were quickly followed by rejection slip after rejection slip. ‘Not interested at this time’ seemed to be the running theme, but the disappointment served its purpose and kept my mind away from darker thoughts. By October 6th, almost seven weeks after that horrid night, and after settling into a form of daily routine, I decided to take a trip to see my mother. She had been ill over the previous few days and was currently living in a nursing home on the outskirts of Inverness; a small city seated amongst the rugged isolation of the Scottish highlands. My mother’s name is Joan, and in her youth she was a strong, self-determined and rather strict woman. Underneath this armour of typical British resolve, however, lay a kindness which occasionally shone through the rare, yet often welcomed cracks. As her only child, and raising me as a single parent, I learned a great level of self-reliance from her, perhaps in the end almost too great. Being two strong-willed individuals we would often clash, and to my detriment I had rarely visited her in the preceding years, thinking of her still as the proud, self-determined woman I had grown up grudgingly admiring from a distance. I had received several worrying phone calls from one of the carers who worked at the nursing home. His name was Benjamin Haig, and I owed him a great deal of gratitude for the amount of time he had taken to explain my mother’s situation to me, not to mention the care he had shown her for some time. Based on the recommendations of the nursing staff, that seeing her son may help stem her confusion and raise her spirits, and with no small sense of guilt, I made the four hour bus journey through the wilderness, admiring the sheer scale of the landscape on the way. After taking a taxi from the bus station to the outskirts of Inverness, I found myself hesitating at the gates of Cradlehall Nursing Home. Conversations were often tense with my mother, but what concerned me the most was what my reaction would be to see this once infallible woman, now confused, frail, and diminished in stature. Physical deterioration is a terrible thing - watching loved ones grow frail, taking on the shadow-like form of their previous selves - but the robbing of their faculties, their very ability to recognise their families and friends, is a particularly bitter pill to swallow. Calming my nerves, and focussing on a happy childhood memory I had of my mother baking cakes for me on an Autumn afternoon, I passed through the gates, entering the reception area via two large security doors. While the home was quite modern and its walls were papered in a friendly peach colour, occasionally sporting a cheerfully framed painting or two, the sting of disinfectant in the air still invaded my impression of the building; a place where the forgotten are left to wither when society has no further use for them. At the front desk I gave my name, and was immediately greeted by the happy and enthusiastic smiles of several of the nursing staff. “Joan always talks about you: The Writer. She will be so happy that you’re here!” exclaimed one of the nurses. Her name was nurse Miller and she seemed a jovial type with round features and kind eyes, but her seemingly oblivious attitude to my mother’s condition worried me. Surely the nurses should have been aware of their patients’ health? As we walked down the brightly lit hallways, passing the occasional room with its door lying open revealing residents who seemed both content yet lost, I questioned nurse Miller about my mother and how she had been. I wanted to prepare myself. While I had recovered somewhat from the guilt of my inaction at the sound of my neighbour’s child crying in pain, my nerves were still not entirely healed, and the thought of my mother losing her mind in a nursing home was enough to send me teetering once more on the edge. I knew that if nurse Miller could inform me of her condition, then perhaps I could more readily deal with the shock. Finally, we stopped outside of an anonymous room. Nurse Miller stood staring at me with a puzzled look on her face. “Your mum is fine, in fact she is one of our most popular residents. She often keeps the others going.” “Then why did Mr Haig phone me?” I enquired, half relieved, half angry. “Who?” “Benjamin Haig, the carer who has been looking after my mother.” “Oh! You must be mistaken. Benjamin Haig isn’t a carer here, but he has been visiting your mother daily,” she answered, confused. “I don’t understand. I assumed you knew that, as he said he was a friend of yours.” PART 3 *More to Follow…*